GERTRUDE ABERCROMBIE KARMA, NEW YORK, 2018. The Sorceress in the Center of Everything By Robert Cozzolino She is a bruja, of course … she only appears once in a hundred years, but when she does even time stands still.1 —James Purdy There is a photograph of Gertrude Abercrombie that provides a window into who she was, where she was, and what she valued. It shows her embracing longtime friend Dizzy Gillespie as they pose before Abercrombie’s Self Portrait, the Striped Blouse, 1940, one of her largest self-portraits. Gertrude and Dizzy hold one another with great affection and warmth, their bodies close and at ease. She relaxes into him, her head resting against his chest, and he smiles with his whole face, cheeks, eyes, ears, and mouth alight with happiness. It was Gillespie’s birth- day, and there were probably few people he would have rather spent it with than Abercrombie. He lived with many of her paintings and she hosted numerous after- hours performances by Gillespie at her home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Their love and mutual respect went deep and was built on a foundation that tran- scended aesthetics. While Gillespie may have been one of Abercrombie’s closest friends, he was part of a world that she related to early on, and to which she was devoted. Jazz and specifically bebop were Abercrombie’s passions, music she viewed as an art form on par with, and likely superior to, anything achieved in the other arts. Her Victorian home at 5728 South Dorchester Avenue on Chicago’s South Side was a safe haven and a salon in the 1940s through the 1960s for (predominantly) African American musicians traveling through Chicago on tour. As was the case with Gillespie, she invited them back to her place after gigs, formed lasting friendships, and mixed national touring bands with local musicians at parties. Abercrombie thrived on this and did so at a time in which black musicians faced segregation, racism, and a hostile environment as they traveled around the U.S. Abercrombie compiled an impressive list of those “adorable musicians” she fed, entertained, or who stayed at her home. Included are Jackie Cain, Miles Davis, Dorothy Donegan, Bud Freeman, Billie Holiday, Milt Jackson, Elvin Jones, Roy Kral, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Hal Russell, Ed Shaughnessy, Art Tatum, and Sarah Vaughan.2 Austrian émigré Ernst Krenek composed an opera (probably Dark Waters, 1950) while renting out the second floor of Abercrombie’s home, and composer Ned Rorem often visited Abercrombie when he returned to Chicago. Pianist Richie Powell composed “Gertrude’s Bounce” (1956) for her and recorded it with Roach, Rollins, Clifford Brown, and George Morrow before his tragic death PAGE 1/11 KARMA 188 East 2nd Street New York NY 10009 www.karmakarma.org at twenty-four. James Purdy based a character in his novel Malcolm (1959) on Abercrombie. She inspired tributes across media. Abercrombie was at the hub of several overlapping cultural circles and her Chicago was at the center of everything. Her intimates included musicians and composers, major figures in the literary and theater worlds, photographers and critics, and of course, other artists. Although well known in Chicago’s art world and active in its many circles, Abercrombie maintained close relationships with a relatively small group of artists. She was friendly with Ivan Albright, Emil Armin, Macena Barton, Don Baum, Eldzier Cortor, Charles Sebree, Frances Strain, Julia Thecla, and oth- ers. Her most intense and sustained artist relationships were with Wisconsin-based friends Dudley Huppler, Karl Priebe, and John Wilde, with whom she corresponded nearly daily for decades. Writer Wendell Wilcox described his friend as “compelling, unyielding, and, according to common standards, eccentric.” As James Purdy suggested, she had an uncanny power, drew people to her and together, and was unlike anyone else in these circles. Wilcox stressed the importance of Abercrombie’s closest friendships: A great many came to admire and wonder at her, but out of all these, few came to be really loved. These few were loved with the truest warmth, and they gave her their warmth in return. There is in these closer friendships a feeling of something predestined, as if they had come from a long way back in time and will go on forever. Wilcox’s intimate perceptions bear out in the photograph of Abercrombie and Gillespie embracing. But let us be clear about what it meant for Abercrombie to project a public persona during the 1940s and 1950s in which she embraced black culture and provided its practitioners with a home. To unsympathetic outsiders it must have been dangerously political. Enjoying jazz might not have been a radical practice for white Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, but there are enough cues in Abercrombie’s archives that allow us to know her viewpoint. In 1972 she reflected on the societal changes she had witnessed in her lifetime in a handwritten note. She stated, The sight of a young black man walking down the street with his head held high & his feet and his body swinging—and after so many years of having been stepped on stomped on—he is saying ‘Fuck you Whitie—I’m ME—I AM ME. I am somebody. I am ME!’ A more beautiful thing I never saw. I wonder if anybody else ever saw that. As clearly as I do. I doubt it. Abercrombie no doubt heard infuriating and terrifying accounts from her musi- cian friends about their experiences with racism as they traveled the country. In Chicago we can surmise that she also witnessed these things and was likely the target for ire, as she had no qualms about walking down the street with her African American friends and intermingling people of all backgrounds. She lived PAGE 2/11 KARMA 188 East 2nd Street New York NY 10009 www.karmakarma.org the life she wanted, free of society’s prejudices, surrounding herself with people on McCarthy-era America’s margins. Two of her closest friends were openly gay— Huppler and Priebe—and reports from her circle show that a broad spectrum of sexual and gender fluidity was embraced in her community. It contributed to a worl- dview that also shaped her art and subject matter. She told an interviewer in 1972: “I try to make [my art] real. I often find my paintings more real than the world around me. And they are quieter. And I can put in that painted world just whom I choose.” Much can be glimpsed about Abercrombie’s values and sense of humor by zoom- ing in on a few close relationships. Milwaukee-based Priebe met Abercrombie in the mid-1930s when he lived in Chicago to study at the School of the Art Institute and volunteered at Jane Addams’ Hull House and a South Side settlement house at 32nd and Wabash Avenue. This was a life-changing experience for him. He was drawn to African American nightclubs on Chicago’s South Side, and eventually he befriended Pearl Bailey, Duke Ellington, Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Max Roach, and others. They corresponded with Priebe, and some stayed with him later in Milwaukee, forming connections to both him and Abercrombie. Priebe also met and corresponded with important figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance such as Richmond Barthé, Katherine Dunham, and Langston Hughes. Many of these new friends became patrons. From 1945–55, Priebe was in a same-sex interracial relationship with Frank Roy Harriott, associate editor of Ebony magazine, who was also on the editorial staff of PM. Harriott, also a writer, received a Rosenwald fellowship to write a novel loosely based on the life of Billie Holiday. When Harriott was ill with a terminal disease, Priebe remained his primary caregiver, an act of devotion that was not lost on his friends. When Frank died Priebe wrote right away to Gertrude about his love’s pass- ing.7 Priebe understood the necessity of being careful, not letting his guard down, and protecting himself and Frank. In response to an invitation from Abercrombie to attend a party, Priebe wrote, “You made me so happy by writing. Here is the problem so answer. Frank H. is living with me and is colored and if we can come in the face of that we will. I mean—if Aidan’s place will allow, then definitely we will be there. So find out and write and we’ll appear. I would love to see you so report.” Huppler was a writer who became an artist, inspired by the work and lives of his painter friends. He came from the tiny town of Muscoda, Wisconsin, studied at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and then spent much of the late 1940s and 1950s traveling to Europe and New York. There he met many of his literary and artist heroes, including Katherine Anne Porter, Marianne Moore, George Platt Lynes, and others. “Oh did I ever get a welcome from Paul Cadmus & Jared French & a nice new painter called George Tooker, a cute name,” he wrote after one of these excursions. “I might as well be in Europe, I’m that happy.” Later he became part of Andy Warhol’s intimate circle in the mid-1950s and exchanged drawings with him. Huppler was extraordinarily perceptive about his friends’ work and regularly offered candid criticism about it in colorful letters. He sent Abercrombie elaborate lists of “painting ideas” and dirty stories, as much to amuse as to inspire her. Huppler knew his audience and began many of his postcards—in plain view of postal authorities—with sexual puns, double entendres, and deliciously salacious tidbits PAGE 3/11 KARMA 188 East 2nd Street New York NY 10009 www.karmakarma.org of their mutual friends’ love lives.